Abstract
The present study examined the ambiguity effects in second language (L2) word recognition. Previous studies on first language (L1) lexical processing have observed that ambiguous words are recognized faster and more accurately than unambiguous words on lexical decision tasks. In this research, L1 and L2 speakers of English were asked whether a letter string on a computer screen was an English word or not. An ambiguity advantage was found for both groups and greater ambiguity effects were found for the non-native speaker group when compared to the native speaker group. The findings imply that the larger ambiguity advantage for L2 processing is due to their slower response time in producing adequate feedback activation from the semantic level to the orthographic level.
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Notes
16 out of the 20 ambiguous words were judged as having only single meaning by all raters.
The author also checked the word frequency by Wordbanks Online: http://scnweb.jkn21.com/WBO2/. No significant difference was found (\(t(38) = .24\), \(p=.815\)).
The subordinate meanings of “swallow” and “temple” were rated as relatively unfamiliar.
One out of twenty NS and two out of twenty-one NNS were left-handed.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Robert Deacon and the anonymous reviewer for their insightful comments on the earlier version of this article, and Katsuo Tamaoka and Yu Tamura for their advice on data analysis. I also appreciate all the valuable comments from professors at Nagoya University.
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Appendix: Complete Set of Stimuli
Appendix: Complete Set of Stimuli
Ambiguous words (homographs) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
bark | drop | mine | plant | swallow |
bill | fall | palm | sentence | tap |
capital | fine | passage | solution | temple |
conduct | issue | plane | subject | wave |
Unambiguous words (non-homographs) | ||||
author | crew | heritage | opportunity | source |
breath | fact | lawn | ritual | species |
canal | fuel | lump | sake | timber |
cause | grain | migration | shelf | woman |
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Ishida, T. Semantic Ambiguity Effects in L2 Word Recognition. J Psycholinguist Res 47, 523–536 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-017-9542-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-017-9542-7